Aftermath
by Chucker
Summary: Short thing taking place during the car ride after Mello's been rescued from the explosion. Feelings and stuff. Yeah. Matt/Mello, but not very romantic. Mello's POV. Don't mind the cover image.


I can't hear anything.

The natural explanation would be that the ringing in my ears started after the first explosion went off. A force powerful enough to rattle the very foundations and bring down the walls of a high security mafia stronghold could surely produce a loud enough noise to put my eardrums out of commission for a little while. And considering that not just one but two explosions went off, it's the only reasonable explanation. It took half of my face, no reason it couldn't have taken my hearing as well.

But I swear, it's been ringing for a few days now.

I can't really be sure what's happened to the left side of my face. I know that my eye is stuck shut, and that I can no longer really feel anything past my nose. The numbness makes it difficult to tell exactly what's still there and what's not, but it's the same numbness that's spread across my shoulder right now, and from the one glimpse I got my shoulder is not a pretty sight. I can only imagine how horribly disfigured I'll be once I've healed. If I make it that far.

I could always check my reflection in the rearview mirror, but honestly, I'm afraid to.

After all, Matt seemed scared enough.

Matt.

God, it sounds strange to even _think _his name right now, knowing that he's within arms reach for the first time in almost five years. I'm having trouble comprehending the fact that he's even here. I never thought I'd be within one hundred miles of him again in my predictably short lifetime, never hoped I would be. I never imagined I would be a half-alive pile of scalded flesh bleeding out onto his passenger seat. Regardless of the plan we had made, I had never imagined what it would be like to actually go through with it.

Hearing his voice over the phone was terrifying enough. But actually seeing him?

I can't bare looking at him, but I can't bare not looking at him either, so I'm staring at him, or staring through him, something like that. He isn't staring at me. I don't think he's properly looked me in the eyes since he found me on the ground and stared into them for so long that I was afraid he wouldn't be able to move again. I don't blame him.

He's not watching the road either. He's staring at his knees, or the ground, or straight through the core of the earth, and he's tapping his fingers mindlessly on the steering wheel in erratic movements. His mouth is moving, but I can't tell whether he's speaking or just moving his mouth. All I can hear is a single, sharp tone, vibrating all throughout the world around me and bouncing off of buildings, and it sure as hell isn't coming from his lips.

I barely notice when he stops the car. I think I stopped paying any attention to what was going on around quite some time ago, and I probably wouldn't have even paid much notice to Matt pulling me out of my sat had it not been for his ribs poking into my back.

It was disturbing how thin he was. What once were childishly chubby cheeks were now long, gaunt, hollow, much like the rest of his face. He was taller, now, more muscular, though posture just as bad as it used to be. His fingers had grown long and spindly and bony, trembling slightly and stained yellow with tobacco. The circles under his eyes rivaled even L's, but he hid them under a pair of plastic-y neon orange biker goggles I had never seen before.

He scared me.

He brought me into some sort of a strange and dusty house, apparently the vacation home of a happy suburban family, and dumped me onto a strange and dusty floral sofa. Wordlessly, he doused every scratch on my body in antiseptic, and wrapped me in bandages until I must have looked like a combination of Egyptian mummy and swaddled baby. He brought me a newspaper, threw it down just out of my reach, and walked out of the room, and when I found the strength in my legs to stand up I followed him.

I found him what appeared to be the laundry room. I don't think he knew I was there, though I can't imagine how he couldn't have heard me coming. Maybe the ringing was drowning things out for him too. He was standing next to a hamper, bare chested, hunched over and clutching his shirt in his hands with white knuckles. After the number of times he had thrown me over his shoulder that day it wasn't hard to figure out why the fabric was more red than white.

And I couldn't hear him, but I could see him, and I could see the way his shoulders heaved and his fingers shook.

And if I could feel anything, I might have felt like sobbing with him, but I was numb.

And I wanted to comfort him, but I couldn't hear my own voice.


End file.
